Client Server News articles from June 2003

Client Server News archives from June 2003

Microsoft Settles AOL Antitrust Suit.
June 2, 2003... The browser war has finally ended. Microsoft and AOL Time Warner have signed an armistice. It's costing Microsoft $750 million and seven years worth of IE royalties, whatever that might amount to. Pretty cheap when you think about...

Tarantella Buys New Moon.
June 2, 2003... Tarantella, nee the Santa Cruz Operation and now a Citrix wannabe, is acquiring privately held New Moon Systems in a bid to expand its product line and market reach. The courtship has been going on for about six months. Tarantella is...

DOJ Picks its Fight.(re Microsoft cases)(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... The Justice Department has changed its mind and won't be defending its antitrust settlement with Microsoft against the continued resistance of Massachusetts and West Virginia. The agency, however, doesn't want to appear as though it's...

Microsoft Blinks.
June 2, 2003... Microsoft has capitulated and is gonna give business folks who buy its software in bulk under its widely criticized Software Assurance (SA) plan "home-use rights" to install the Office products they use in the, well, office, on their home PCs...

Microsoft Cuts Office XP Price.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... Microsoft said Wednesday that it had cut the retail price of Office XP Standard and Professional by roughly 15%. Office XP Professional, which has sold for a hefty $599 in the US, will drop to $499. Microsoft is also cutting the price of...

Ballmer Sells Nearly a Billion Dollars Worth of Microsoft Stock.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sold $995 million worth of his Microsoft stock to diversify his holdings, he said. According to a public statement he issued when the news came out, as it must because of government regulations, we are to understand...

NuTcracker To Support Itanium 2.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... MKS says that by Q4 its MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers, the old Unix-to-Windows NuTcracker porting widgetry that it acquired when it bought Virginia-based DataFocus back in 1999, will support Intel's Itanium chips running Microsoft's...

Platform & NEC Do OEM Deal.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... Platform Computing has gotten an OEM deal that will see NEC Japan sell its grid and clustering software on its Intel-based Express5800 line, which runs up to 32 Itanium nodes. NEC says it will target HPC sites in manufacturing, government and...

Opteron Benchmarks Official.(for AMD)(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... AMD is showing around 57 benchmarks that have now been approved and posted by Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) that make Opteron the highest-performing chip for 2P and 4P servers. The scores include SPECweb, SPECint,...

Intel Light Out after SMEs.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... Intel is going to try a new approach to demand creation and try persuading SMEs - especially in emerging markets like China, India, Brazil, Mexico and Russia - to trade in those desktop PCs they're been running their business on for Xeon-based...

Fujitsu Siemens Cuts Server Prices.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... In an effort to get its channel partners competitive, Fujitsu Siemens has cut prices on its entry-level Intel-based Primergy servers, including its two-way Xeon F250s and next-generation TX150 tower uniprocessors, by roughly 12%-15%. The...

Oasis Moves on to Web Vulnerabilities.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... Oasis has set up a Web Application Security (WAS) Technical Committee to produce a classification scheme for web security vulnerabilities, described as a model to provide guidance for initial threat, impact and risk ratings and an XML scheme to...

Intel Invests in Russian Firm.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... Intel has put an undisclosed amount of money into a Moscow company, its first. The funding goes to ru-Net Holdings, a software, IT and consulting holding company earmarked for a system integration company called TopS Business Integrator...

Astute Gets Third CEO in Nine Months; Sennhauser Out.
June 2, 2003... In what seems like unusually high turnover in the corner office, storage silicon start-up Astute Networks has gotten its third CEO in nine months. Without any fanfare, the San Diego, California start-up recently named Bill Atkinson CEO to...

Vixel Sues Brocade.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... Vixel has filed a patent infringement suit against Brocade Communications. Its suit alleges that Brocade is infringing three Vixel patents through the unauthorized manufacture, use and sale of various SAN switching products, including Brocade's...

AT&T Debuts New Storage Service.(StorageConnect)(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... AT&T has expanded its business continuity offerings with a new storage service aimed at business and government agencies. Dubbed StorageConnect, the new service provides networked remote replication, backup and recovery. It is supposed to...

Storage Software To Grow a Tiny Bit This Year.(according to Gartner)(Industry Overview)
June 2, 2003... The storage management software market is projected to grow 2.9% this year after reporting its first year-over-year decline in 2002. Though other people might call it flat, according to Gartner, the worldwide storage management software...

Softek Names Channel Sales Boss.(Jonathan Grantham )(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... Storage management software vendor Softek has tapped EMC exec Jonathan Grantham to the newly created position of VP of worldwide channel sales operations. Before joining Softek, Grantham oversaw channel sales in Europe for EMC and before that...

McData Fares Well.(Q1 2003)(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... McData reported earnings of $5.3 million, or five cents a share, on revenues of $103.2 million for its first quarter ended April 30. The results are slightly ahead of McData's projections. In early May, the storage switch vendor was...

HP Refugee To Run EMC's Software Unit.(Mark Lewis to run Open Software)(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... EMC has named Mark Lewis to head its Open Software Operation, effective July 1, because the incumbent Erez Ofer, a disciple of Symmetrix inventor and EMC problem child Moshe Yanai, is going back to Israel. Lewis, EMC's CTO and resident HP...

SCO to Novell: We Do To Own the Unix IP.
June 2, 2003... Embattled SCO Group CEO Darl McBride, currently the most maligned man in the industry, both publicly and privately, says that despite Novell's contention that SCO doesn't own the Unix patents and copyrights, his legal councilors say SCO does...

Novell Tries To Shoot Down SCO IP Claims.
June 2, 2003... This is the same story that ran the other day as the news broke except for the last paragraph. Practically at the crack of dawn Wednesday morning Novell had what is basically a "cease and desist" letter hand delivered to the SCO Group...

SCO Makes Money for First Time in History.(Q2 2003)
June 2, 2003... There must be a moral here somewhere. SCO gets out of the Linux business and for the first time in its nine years of existence, it makes money. From the way SCO CEO Darl McBride was talking SCO won't be back in the Linux business -...

SAP Jettisons Database; Passes It to MySQL.
June 2, 2003... Swedish open source database house MySQL AB MySQL has acquired commercial rights to the SAP DB database, which it plans to offer free of charge under the GPL as well under a commercial license to businesses that don't want to be bound by GPL...

MySQL on a Roll; Looks to Double Revenues.(2003 ad )
June 2, 2003... After tripling its revenues last year, Swedish open source database house MySQL AB expects to double its revenues this year. MySQL CEO Marten Mickos said that although he was "promising a doubling" he was personally shooting for tripling...

Microsoft Suffers First Serious Loss to Linux.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... Over Microsoft's protests and reported offers of deeper discounts and despite a pilgrimage Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made there to plead the company's case, Microsoft has lost the city of Munich to Linux. The city fathers decided the...

CA Follows its Mentor, Oracle, to China.
June 2, 2003... The chief architect of Computer Associates' uniquely cross-company Linux Technology Group Sam Greenblatt took a flying trip to the Orient a few days ago and, following in the footsteps of CA's role model in the Linux arena, returned with an...

Opera 7.11 for Linux Goes Gold.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... Norwegian browser developer Opera Software has put Opera 7.11 on Linux, the first Opera 7 release for the open source OS. The release, which puts the Linux version on a par with Windows, features several enhancements over Opera 6 such as a...

VA Losses Narrow.(Q3 2003)(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... VA Software has narrowed losses in its fiscal third quarter ended April 26 to $3.61 million, or seven cents a share, compared to $7.73 million, or 15 cents a share year-over-year. Excluding non-recurring charges, the losses came in at $2.8...

MySQL Debuts on Opteron.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... MySQL AB has put out a version of its eponymous open source database on AMD's newfangled Opteron processor. It can be downloaded at www.mysql.com/downloads. Separately, MySQL said the database was also available now on the QNX Neutrino...

Lindows Signs Japanese Reseller.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... A publicly held Tokyo company called the Edge, reportedly as leading ISP, is going to sell a localized version of the Lindows operating system in Japan, the start-up's first known venture overseas. Lindows says it's also going to localize...

PlayStations: The Latest Thing in Supercomputers.
June 2, 2003... The serious sounding National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has rigged up a supercomputer by connecting 70 Sony PlayStation 2 game consoles using HP network switches and running Linux....

People's Notebook Proves Popular.(from HP)(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... We read in the papers that HP has just started supplying a cheap so- called "people's notebook" based on Linux TLE and an 800MHz Celeron chip in Thailand and the $450 widget is so popular the country's Information and Communications Technology...

Usenix Panel To Pick Over SCO Issues.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... Open source advocates are assembling a Usenix panel on "Intellectual Property in an Age of Commerce" that expects to tussle with the issues raised by the SCO v IBM case and its implications for Linux kernel developers and distributors, folks...

Start-up Reportedly Abandons Mips Chip for Opteron.(Key Research)
June 2, 2003... Stealth start-up Key Research, which well-placed sources said was using the orphaned Mips chips to create a 64-bit Linux cluster system when it leaked the fact that it had picked up a $12.5 million round back in February, has reportedly...

Factoid.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... Prudential Securities, contemplating the license bog companies like Oracle, Siebel and PeopleSoft have gotten into, remarks that by its estimate less than 10% of US workers, or approximately 12 million of the 140 million who actually hold jobs...

Red Hat Claims SCO Hasn't Unsettled Business.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... Red Hat, which wishes the whole sorry situation would go away and stop threatening business, claims that SCO's letters to CEOs and the publicity surrounding the uproar haven't derailed any of the contracts it was counting on. Almost everybody's...

Novell Gets Lion's Share of Unix Revenues.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... Because of the great SCO brouhaha, the open source community has been thumbing through the SCO Group's old SEC filings and one of them came across this passage in the 10-K SCO filed covering its 2002 fiscal year, which ended October 31. "The...

SCO May Sue Linus.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... CBS MarketWatch interviewed SCO CEO Darl McBride and says that he said that "unless more companies start licensing SCO's property, he may also sue Linus Torvalds," the creator of Linux. Then, in the face of inflamed public passions, he told...

Is Doug Michels Liable?(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... Speaking of people to sue, it seems possible the old SCO, now Tarantella, and Doug Michels, CEO of both, might get added to the list. According to an e-mail we got from one stockholder, if SCO didn't acquire all the patents, copyrights and Unix...

SCO Tax a Rounding Error: Boies.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... "That's a cost that gets lost in the rounding. The cost efficiency of Linux won't rise or fall." - SCO's fancy lawyer David Boies, the hero of the Microsoft antitrust trial, on the $1 billion suit he filed against IBM on SCO's behalf and the...

Crystal Decisions: Home of the Brave.(Brief Article)
June 2, 2003... Crystal Decisions, the Seagate spin-off that used to be Seagate Software and whose Crystal Reports software is the only third-party technology to be included in Visual Studio.NET, has filed an S-1 statement with the SEC to go public when market...

Microsoft Takes Microsoft-sized Loss.
June 2, 2003... Microsoft has sold its 22% position in UK cable company Telewest Communication, the shares it paid $2.6 billion for three years ago, to phone company IDT for $5 million in cash. That's a loss of $2.595 billion, according to our ciphering, not...

SCO finds smoking gun.(Linux Watch)
June 9, 2003... A paralegal working on behalf of the SCO Group and rooting through the masses of documents related to the travels of Unix as it's made its way from one company to another over the years came across a misfiled piece of paper yesterday that SCO...

Roger Sippl's back in the game.(Above All Software Inc)
June 9, 2003... It looks like Roger Sippl, who started Informix, Visigenic and Vantive Corporation and has been holidaying, so to speak, the last few years, playing VC at SipplMacdonald Ventures, is back. The serial entrepreneur has started another company...

Has HP got a PC exit strategy?(Hewlett-Packard Co.)
June 9, 2003... When Hewlett-Packard came up with its numbers last week, it basically threw in the towel on trying beat Dell out for the top market share in PCs even though, as HP sniffed, it thinks Dell is only top dog in the US. PCs, by the way, are the...

Exchange Server RC1 debuts.(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... Microsoft has put out release candidate 1 of Exchange Server 2003, the next version of its messaging server. RC1 of Exchange Server 2003, formerly code named Titanium, is supposed to include a set of new and enhanced deployment tools to...

PeopleSoft buys JD Edwards.(J.D. Edwards and Co.)
June 9, 2003... In the latest exercise in consolidation, PeopleSoft said Monday that it is buying fellow traveler JD Edwards & Company for something in the neighborhood of maybe $1.6 billion or $1.7 billion in stock. The final value depends on where...

Wyse loses HP business.(Wyse Technology Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co.)
June 9, 2003... Well, Wyse Technology is openly acknowledging that it's lost the HP account that HP supposedly inherited from Compaq when the two merged. Wyse is altogether vague about when exactly it lost the business. There were roundly denied rumors...

First Jupiter beta arrives.(Microsoft Corp. release beta of BizTalk Server 2004)(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... Microsoft has launched the beta of BizTalk Server 2004, the first phase of the so-called Jupiter launch. Jupiter is the code name for Microsoft's plans to fuse its BizTalk Server, Commerce Server and Content Manage-ment Server into a single...

Invensys sells off Baan.(Cerberus Capital Management LP and General Atlantic Partners LLC acquires Baan Company N.V.)(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... UK-based Invensys plc, which saved Baan from becoming the wreck of the Hesperus almost exactly three years ago by buying it for $713 million, is selling it off for $135 million, a whopping great loss, to pay down its own debt. The...

Ximian hopes to chip away at the great Microsoft edifice.(Linux Watch)
June 9, 2003... Ximian has arrived at that magic moment known as Ximian Desktop 2, a major new version of its Linux desktop software, which it claims has been installed by 1.5 million users worldwide. Desktop 2, positioned as an alternative to Microsoft,...

IBM promises Linux BladeCenter for Telcos.(International Business Machines Corp.)(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... IBM is going to expand its contribution to Intel-based blade servers with a telecoms model called the BladeCenter T that won't be available until next year. It figures the thing will ultimately run Linux and stand up under all sorts of harsh...

MySQL raises $19.5m.(Linux Watch)(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... As expected, MySQL AB has gotten new funding. The Series B round netted the Swedish outfit $19.5 million taking its total financing to $23.5 million. Benchmark Capital led the round, which also included investments from Geneva-based...

E-mail start-up gets funded.(Scalix Corp. receives finance from New Enterprise Associates)(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... Scalix, the year-old Menlo Park, California outfit that's doing a carrier-grade e-mail infrastructure for Linux, has gotten a $13.2 million first round from New Enterprise Associates, its lead investor, and the Mayfield Fund, where it was...

Jabber enters wireless IM market.(Jabber SMS Gateway, Instant Messaging)
June 9, 2003... Jabber Inc plans to introduce a suite of instant messaging products for the wireless market. SMS Gateway, the first product in the suite, is to be rolled out to mobile operators and other customers in Q3. SMS Gateway is supposed to let...

SCO enjoined.(Linux Watch)(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... Linuxtag, that German user group threatened by SCO's letter of possible legal liabilities to big companies around the world if they don't license its code, has gotten a preliminary injunction against SCO just as it said it would if SCO didn't...

The ASPCA adopts a penguin.(American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals uses IBM e-mail system based on Linux )(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, worthy institution that it is, has taken a penguin to its heart--an IBM e-mail system based on Linux and running on xSeries servers designed to help veterinarians and field...

The Pirates of Penguinance: the very model of a SCO executive.(Linux Watch)
June 9, 2003... A parody by Rick Moen and Karsten Self with apologies to Gilbert & Sullivan. [The scene: Major-General Darl McBride has stepped up to the fo'castle of the HMS SCaldera, which has just fought its first skirmish against the dread Pirates of...

Microsoft to invest $2b in server software.(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... That recent Harvard Business Review article that said IT's strategic role is on the wane seems to have spooked Microsoft quite a bit. At TechEd, it announced that it would spend over $2 billion in its next fiscal year, which starts in...

Microsoft, VeriSign to develop new PKI platform.(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... Microsoft and Internet security services provider VeriSign have joined hands to develop new PKI products aimed at enterprise customers. The new PKI platform, built on Windows Server 2003 and VeriSign's Managed PKI Services, is supposed to...

HP revives old entry-level NAS device.(Hewlett-Packard Co.)
June 9, 2003... Hewlett-Packard is reviving its entry-level StorageWorks s1000 NAS widget some eight months after it discontinued the thing. Evidently the b2100 that replaced it doesn't cut it at the low end. On Monday, HP re-launched the multiprotocol...

IBM virtualization will initially support only IBM storage.(International Business Machines Corp.)(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... IBM said that the first rev of its upcoming storage virtualization products will support only its own storage systems--the Enterprise Storage Server and FastT storage systems. Blue said the stuff would support non-IBM storage systems later...

Revivio to debut instant restore appliance in 2H.(Drive Bay)
June 9, 2003... Revivio plans to launch its instant restore storage appliance this fall. The start-up's appliance is designed to let enterprises access data as it existed at any point in time, replacing single point-in-time copies such as snapshots,...

EMC, HDS & IBM may become irrelevant RAID vendors.(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... "The last harbor for big margins in the network storage industry is remote data replication. The primary reason that customers buy EMC's Symm monolithic storage is for their remote replication SRDF technology. "Unlike virtualization, which...

Spinnaker launches new NAS server.(Spinnaker Networks Inc., Network Attached Storage, SpinServer 4100)(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... Storage start-up Spinnaker Networks has launched what it claims is the fastest NAS server. Dubbed SpinServer 4100, the new NAS device is supposed to deliver a 50% boost in performance over the company's SpinServer 3300 and a 40% increase...

Tacit names Grodhaus CEO.(Tacit Networks Inc., Greg Grodhaus)(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... Storage caching appliance concern Tacit Networks has brought in industry veteran Greg Grodhaus to run the business. Interim CEO Tim Williams continues as chairman of the South Plainfield, New Jersey outfit. Tacit described Grodhaus as...

Windows Storage Server 2003 coming.(Drive Bay)(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... Microsoft will be releasing Windows Storage Server 2003 to manufacturing this month. Previously known as Windows Powered Network Attached Storage and before that as Server Appliance Kit, Storage Server 2003 is expected to be available from...

Information at the flick of a wrist.(Microsoft Corp. starts a new wireless service called MSN Direct)(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... In just a few months, when you flick your wrist to get the time, your watch, sorry, smart watch will be able to tell you whether your stock is headed north or south, the scores for your favorite team, the weather and a lot more. And making...

SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services to beta in fall.(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... Microsoft plans to put out a public beta of SQL Server Reporting Services in the fall and ship the product by the end of the year. Reporting Services is a server-based application that aims to increase business insight for companies and...

Servers: everyone wins.(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... In a twist on the old parable of the six blind men and the elephant, the major server vendors are each highlighting the parts of the IDC and Gartner Q1 server count that reflect best on their performance, ignores the negatives and makes them...

IT services on slow recovery path.(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... IT services, which took a hit last year, will begin a slow recovery this year, Gartner says. It estimates that IT services revenues will grow 3.5% to $555.17 billion this year. IT services fell to $536.26 billion in '02 from $539.57 billion in...

Oasis & RosettaNet collaborate.(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... Oasis and RosettaNet, two of the industry's standards bodies, say they have formalized plans for a coordinated approach to standards development and implementation that will streamline B2B integration practices for global supply chain...

Think HP, Siebel & .NET.(Hewlett-Packard Co., Siebel Systems Inc.)(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... HP has set up a new Solution Center in Sophia Antipolis, France that's jointly funded and staffed by HP, Siebel and Microsoft and is supposed to help customers build solutions using ProLiant servers, Siebel applications and .NET. Siebel and HP...

HyperTransport compatibility platform developed.(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... The HyperTransport Consortium has got itself a HyperTransport compatibility platform, a consortium-blessed circuit board co-developed by Xilinx and GDA Technologies that GDA is commercializing. It's supposed to ensure interoperability between...

Office Project 2003 to debut this fall.(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... Microsoft said Wednesday that Office Project 2003, the new version of its project management suite of products, would ship in the fall. Project 2003 is available in two versions--Project Standard 2003 for standalone desktop application use...

Boxx ships dual Opterons.(Boxx Technologies Inc.)(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... Boxx Technologies says it's shipping two-way Opteron workstations for digital content creation thanks to early collaboration with a number of motherboard makers. Called the 3Dboxx M4, the widgets are priced at $2,501 to start for the 1.4GHz 240...

HP makes Opsware's day.
June 9, 2003... HP is adopting Opsware, the company started by aging Netscape wunderkind Marc Andreessen, as part of its Utility Data Center (UDC) virtualization scheme, saying the pairing will give enterprise customers a solution that virtualizes computing...

Egenera raids Stratus again.(Mariam Ganem appointed, Stratus Technologies )(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... Egenera has gone back to its favorite recruiting grounds and hired Mariam Ganem out of Stratus Technologies to be VP of worldwide sales operations and channel support responsible for inside sales, resellers and business development. At Stratus,...

RackSaver gets a round.(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... RackSaver, the little third-tier company whose Xeon cluster took the showcase Pixar account away from Sun and is also doing Opteron boxes, has pulled in its first round. It's getting $14 million from co-leads Voyager Capital and Celerity...

SEC probes IBM accounting practices.(Securities and Exchange Commission)(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... IBM said Monday in a very hazy statement after the market closed that the SEC is investigating some of its revenue recognition practices, a little shoe that some people thought might drop though maybe not in the context given. The SEC is...

SCO's price tag.(BILLY GRAMS)
June 9, 2003... Rumor has it--and this is only rumor now mind--that SCO's price tag is $2 billion. That's what it reportedly told IBM it could be had for.

Sendo sues Orange.(BILLY GRAMS)
June 9, 2003... Sendo, the UK cell phone start-up suing Microsoft charging it stole its technology and passed it on to low-cost Taiwanese OEMs so Microsoft can dominate the 2.5G market, is now suing fellow Brit Orange UK, the mobile phone operator, claiming...

Global 2k snub Linux.(BILLY GRAMS)(Brief Article)
June 9, 2003... "Microsoft's license changes have strongly antagonized Global 2000 organizations but will generate little corporate enthusiasm to replace incumbent end-user operating systems and applications. Through 2005, Linux-based application deployment in...